A&M Records, Inc. v. John Lamonte , 366 F. App'x 736 ( 2010 )

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FILED
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT FEB 17 2010
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
A&M RECORDS, INC., a Delaware No. 08-56105
corporation; et al.,
D.C. No. 2:95-cv-00212-FMC-B
Plaintiffs - Appellees,
v. MEMORANDUM *
JOHN LAMONTE, an individual; et al.,
Defendants - Appellants.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Central District of California
Florence-Marie Cooper, District Judge, Presiding
Submitted February 12, 2010**
Pasadena, California
Before: THOMAS and SILVERMAN, Circuit Judges, and BEISTLINE, *** Chief
District Judge.
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.
**
The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision
without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
***
The Honorable Ralph R. Beistline, United States District Judge for the
District of Alaska, sitting by designation.
John Lamonte and Creative Sounds, Ltd. appeal the district court’s judgment
of contempt entered against them and their counsel. The district court found
appellants in contempt of an Amended Final Judgment and Permanent Injunction
entered following the settlement of a copyright infringement action brought by
A&M Records, Inc., and other music companies. Lamonte and Creative Sounds
appeal the entry of the Second Amended Judgment and Permanent Injunction and
the judgment of contempt. We affirm. Because the parties are familiar with the
facts and procedural history, we need not recount it here.
We review a district court’s civil contempt order under the deferential abuse
of discretion standard. Irwin v. Mascott, 370 F.3d 924, 931 (9th Cir. 2004); Hook
v. Ariz. Dep’t of Corr., 107 F.3d 1397, 1403 (9th Cir. 1997). We review the
district court’s underlying factual findings for clear error. Irwin, 370 F.3d at 924.
We will not reverse the order of contempt unless we have “a definite and firm
conviction that the district court committed a clear error of judgment after
weighing the relevant factors.” In re Dual-Deck Video Cassette Recorder Antitrust
Lit., 10 F.3d 693, 695 (9th Cir. 1993). “The district court has wide latitude in
determining whether there has been contemptuous defiance of its order.” Hook,
107 F.3d at 1403 (internal quotation marks omitted).
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The district court’s Amended Final Judgment and Permanent Injunction was
a valid exercise of its power, and clearly prohibited the defendants from claiming
to own, or attempting to sell, the 30,000 master recordings listed in Schedule 3 of
the order. The defendants’ interpretation of the order is untenable and was
appropriately rejected by the district court, which was in the best position to
determine the meaning of its prior order.
Defendants violated the district court’s clear prohibition when they sent a
letter stating their intention to sell the 30,000 master recordings as soon as
possible, and stating that their right to do so was unaffected by the Amended
Permanent Injunction. Their arguments to the contrary are unsupported by the
record.
The district court did not abuse its discretion in finding defendants and
counsel in contempt of the Amended Final Judgment and Permanent Injunction.
Defendants repeatedly refused to comply with the district court’s orders to produce
the 30,000 master recordings at Ocean Tomo in Chicago, and still have provided
absolutely no explanation for this failure. The offer, over almost a year later, for
plaintiffs to view the recordings in a completely different location controlled by the
defendants cannot be characterized as a good faith effort to substantially comply
with the district court’s orders. The recordings they did produce were only a
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portion of those requested by the district court, and were copies instead of original
documents. The recordings were produced in an unusable form and devoid of any
chain-of-rights documentation. The chain-of-rights documentation defendants
finally produced was an unorganized “document dump.” The chain-of-rights
documentation did not clearly demonstrate chain of title rights to much of the
disputed recordings and was not in the form required by the district court.
In sum, defendants and their attorney violated the court orders, did not make
a good faith effort to comply with the orders, and had no basis to decline to
perform founded on a good faith and reasonable interpretation of the orders.
The district court was entirely correct in all of its rulings. We affirm the
entry of the Amended Judgment and Permanent Injunction and the contempt order.
AFFIRMED.
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